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New mother is trying to deal with abusive grandpa

Dear Carolyn: My father-in-law is a classic jerk; he neglected and abused my husband throughout his childhood and teen years. By abuse I mean clobbering him with closed fists in anger until my husband was old e

New mother is trying to deal with abusive grandpa

Dear Carolyn: My father-in-law is a classic jerk; he neglected and abused my husband throughout his childhood and teen years. By abuse I mean clobbering him with closed fists in anger until my husband was old enough to hit back. As adults we have little to do with him, and I've taken a laissez-faire approach to his belittling comments and creepy lifestyle.

That all went out the window, though, when I became a mother and he, a grandfather.

Because the baby was premature we asked everyone to get the CDC-recommended vaccine boosters and to respect our privacy in the hospital. However, he brazenly showed up while I was in recovery attempting to breastfeed, and did not leave or look away. He insisted the vaccines were pointless and took my baby out of my arms (had I not been on two machines and a blood drip I would have fought him off).

Weeks later, I agreed to bring the baby to a family gathering at his home. That day he informed us that his wife had bronchitis but was feeling better due to antibiotics. I refused to allow the baby in his home and my husband and I had a huge falling out over it (he still takes his dad's side due to a sort of familial Stockholm syndrome).

His father then insisted on dropping by with a gift — three stuffed Disney princesses! One of the only things my father-in-law knows about me is that I'm a staunch feminist, as he teases me about it whenever he can. Disney princesses are a big NO for a newborn — why make her a consumer dimwit before she even decides she likes those characters?

My question for you: Can I limit her time around him knowing he is making a point of not respecting our rules and boundaries? — NYC

Carolyn: Of course, if she didn't have a father and you didn't have a husband.

As a parent, you'll want to throw his princesses back in his face. As a spouse, though, you have an important role in supporting your husband's desire to solve this difficult father of his.

And as a human at the beginning of a looong road, you have a large personal stake in choosing battles wisely — as in, picking ones that still make sense decades from now. I respectfully submit that the political messages of toys she receives before she can crawl won't make the cut.

You have a fragile baby, a scarred husband and an abusive grandpa. Fighting every battle is a luxury you can't afford.

The seed of every good decision toward these priorities is in your marriage. You and your husband need to talk, as forthrightly as you're able, about each of your goals with respect to his father. This is the long-range part of the conversation: "I want him in my life because he's my dad," or, "I'd prefer to have nothing to do with him, but you need this so I will rally, within limits."

This is also where you talk about whether your husband will ever get what he wants from a person who, quite possibly, lives to deny giving what people want.

That dovetails into the next logical topic: figuring out what achieving your goals would look like. Can your husband speak to the kind of childhood he'd like to provide for your daughter? Can you then agree on what grandpa behaviors legitimately work against that, versus antics that are merely obnoxious?

Depending on the severity of your husband's emotional scars, this reckoning might need a push from counseling.